About the project

The MasterMind project aimed to make high quality treatment for depression more widely available for adults suffering from the illness by the use of ICT. A major cause of morbidity worldwide, depression is characterised by its high incidence, social cost and proven clinical effectiveness of ICT in its treatment.

Our goal was to assess through implementation at scale (more than 5.000 patient overall) the impact of cCBT (computerised Cognitive Behavioural Therapy) and video conference for collaborative care and treatment for depression across 10 EU and Associated Countries.

The project identified barriers and success factors to implementing the two services on a large scale in different political, social, economic and technical health care contexts and from the perspective of different stakeholders such as patients, professionals and health insurances. We aimed to provide recommendations for successful strategies for implementing cCBT and video conference for depression in these different settings.

The project ran from the 1st of March 2014 to the 28th of February 2017 and had a total budget of €14m co-funded by the CIP ICT PSP.

Overall goal and themes

MasterMind’s overall goal was to “pave the way for equal access to quality mental health care across Europe”. This was based on the central themes of MasterMind:

Accessibility and equity: All European citizens suffering from depression should have equal access to high quality treatment.

Collaboration: Countries and regions within Europe should collaborate in order to exchange knowledge to optimize treatment for depression.

Inclusiveness: All relevant stakeholders should be included in the process of developing depression treatment options.

Self-management: All citizens suffering from depression, who are able to, and who would benefit from it, should have the opportunity of managing their own mental health.

“Mastering of own mind”: Through the use of ICT for treatment of depression, depressed citizens can master their own treatment, and thereby their own mind, with minimal involvement of mental health professional

The Committed Regions were regions or partners that had an interest in the services deployed in MasterMind, but which, for various reasons, could not participate in the project itself. This Board functioned as a vehicle to share information between partners in MasterMind and committed regions outside of the consortium to share learning and disseminate information. The learning on both sides helped in the planning and strategy development to widen the use of eMental health services across Europe.

Scientific Committee

The Scientific Committee of MasterMind consisted of the following experts.

Dr. Jose María Quintana

Position/Affiliation: Head of the Research Unit Medical Section Galdakao Hospital – Usansolo and associate professor in the Department of Preventive Medicine and Public Health, University of the Basque Country UPV / EHU

Position/Affiliation: Assistant professor at department of Health Sciences at the faculty of Life Sciences of the VU University Amsterdam

Expertise: Economic evaluations, epidemiology, life sciences

MAST domain: 5 – Cost-effectiveness

The Scientific Committee aimed to ensure that MAST was used correctly in the trials, to ensure that each trial was carried out in accordance with the protocol, to ensure that the data analysis was carried out in accordance with the MAST guidelines, and to take part in the publication of papers in scientific journals.